In Los Angeles, Bringing EV Carsharing to Low-Income Communities

Los Angeles is notorious for its addiction to cars. From mind-boggling traffic to an underutilized public transit system, it’s the single largest oil consuming metropolitan area in the United States, consuming 1.8 billion gallons of gasoline per year (roughly .12 mbd). In particular, many of the low-income neighborhoods around in LA lack effective access to public transit and are often priced out of owning a private vehicle—let alone an efficient car like a hybrid or a fully electric- vehicle.

A new program launching this year could be the first step toward changing this reality for underserved communities in LA, by marrying the forward-thinking concepts of car sharing and electric vehicles.

Many of the low-income neighborhoods around in LA lack effective access to public transit and are often priced out of owning a private vehicle—let alone an efficient car like a hybrid or a fully electric- vehicle.

“[Los Angeles was] very interested in creating something that would be all electric and low pollution. Right now, a lot of the programs in LA are trying to shift people away from fossil fuels,” Feigon tells The Fuse. She explains that the idea for this new EV car sharing program came out of a conference earlier this year that SUMC organized for the city of Los Angeles on shared mobility. In particular, bringing EVs and car sharing options to low income communities suffering from poor air quality was a central component of the three-year pilot’s goal. “This is really the first project of its kind to combine all of these things.”

The country’s lowest earning families spend over 12 percent of their pre-tax income on gasoline every year.

Beyond reducing air pollution, the project will ultimately bring electric vehicle technology—generally priced out of reach for low-income buyers—to communities that might not otherwise benefit from the technology for many years. Perhaps most importantly, the savings in fuel costs provided by electric vehicles can have a far more dramatic impact on the budgets of families in lower income brackets. The lowest earning families spend over 12 percent of their pre-tax income on gasoline every year.

“This [program] is really going to spread this technology to these communities. It’ll give them a chance to test out and experience electric cars,” Feigon explains.

While Feigon’s project has strong, on the ground, community support—which she says is a vital component to the plan’s ultimate success—she admits that making the program work in real-world applications will be “challenging.”

“Having all electric cars in a car sharing program requires education,” Feigon explains. Her company IGO employed some EVs within a car-sharing system and she remembers the initial obstacles well. “We had a lot of people that didn’t really understand that there wasn’t also a gas engine. They thought that maybe [the EVs] were hybrids. People were excited about using the cars, they’d drive them pretty far and then they’d run out of power.”

“Car sharing is a tricky proposition for an electric vehicle because they spend much of the day charging,” Tillemann tells the Fuse. He is not involved in the planning of the project but understands the uphill battle that the city and SUMC are facing. “There are pluses and minuses. But one of the good things about a car sharing program is that you get much higher utilization for the EV.”

As for charging infrastructure, Tillemann is optimistic: “LA has a much better infrastructure for fast charging than the majority of the U.S. So long as they have enough fast chargers that are installed in the area where the EVs are being shared, I think it could work very well.”

While LA does have some EV charging infrastructure already in place—adding a proposed 1,000 charging stations citywide by 2017—the problem is that the stations are not currently located in the underserved communities that this project plans to target.

In fact, while LA does have some EV charging infrastructure already in place—adding a proposed 1,000 charging stations citywide by 2017—the problem is that those stations are not currently located in the underserved communities that this project plans to target.

“[The charging stations] have to be in the neighborhoods where the project is going to take place, of course,” Feigon echoes. “And a lot of the low income communities that are going to be served by this program are not where the charging stations have been installed.”

To that end, this program aims to add 110 charging stations in the low-income areas where the EVs will be deployed. Ultimately, ensuring that charging stations and vehicles are easily accessible to these neighborhoods is the heart and soul of this project.

“Electric cars shouldn’t just be about Teslas,” Feigon says, referring to the luxury vehicles currently available on the market. “It’s in our interest to see that the benefits of shared mobility, new technology, and energy efficiency reaches all communities.”

Despite the challenges of implementing this specific program, Feigon believes that car sharing is, in general, a savvy solution to high fuel consumption and car-dependent lifestyles.

“Studies have shown that people who have access to car sharing increase their use of public transit, biking and walking. Many of them sell their cars or postpone their decision to buy a car,” Feigon says. “Car sharing alone can be really beneficial. Using electric cars adds on a whole new layer of benefits while also giving [low-income residents] exposure to this new technology.”

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The Fuse is an energy news and analysis site supported by Securing America’s Future Energy. The views expressed here are those of individual contributors and do not necessarily represent the views of the organization.

Issues in Focus

Safety Standards for Crude-By-Rail Shipments

A series of accidents in North America in recent years have raised concerns regarding rail shipments of crude oil. Fatal accidents in Lynchburg, Virginia, Lac-Megantic, Quebec, Fayette County, West Virginia, and (most recently) Culbertson, Montana have prompted public outcry and regulatory scrutiny.

2014 saw an all-time record of 144 oil train incidents in the U.S.—up from just one in 2009—causing a total of more than $7 million in damage.

The spate of crude-by-rail accidents has emerged from the confluence of three factors. First is the massive increase in oil movements by rail, which has increased more than three-fold since 2010. Second is the inadequate safety features of DOT-111 cars, particularly those constructed prior to 2011, which account for roughly 70 percent of tank cars on U.S. railroads. Third is the high volatility of oil produced from the Bakken and other shale formations, which makes this crude more prone towards combustion.

Of these three, rail car safety standards is the factor over which regulators can exert the most control. After months of regulatory review, on May 1, 2015, the White House and the Department of Transportation unveiled the new safety standards. The announcement also coincided with new tank car standards in Canada—a critical move, since many crude by rail shipments cross the U.S.-Canadian border. In the words DOT, the new rule:

Since the rule was announced, Republicans in Congress sought to roll back the provision calling for an advanced breaking system, following concerns from the rail industry that such an upgrade would be unnecessary and could cost billions of dollars. The advanced braking systems are required to be in place by 2021.

Democrats in Congress have argued that the new rules are insufficient to mitigate the danger. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) both issued statements arguing that the rules were insufficient and the timelines for safety improvements were too long.

The current industry standard car, the CPC-1232, came into usage in October 2011. These cars have half inch thick shells (marginally thicker than the DOT-111 7/16 inch shells) and advanced valves that are more resilient in the event of an accident. However, these newer cars were involved in the derailments and explosions in Virginia and West Virginia within the past year, raising questions about the validity of replacing only the DOT-111s manufactured before 2011.

Before the rule was finalized, early reports indicated that the rule submitted to the White House by the Department of Transportation has proposed a two-stage phase-out of the current fleet of railcars, focusing first on the pre-2011 cars, then the current standard CPC-1232 cars. In the final rule, DOT mandated a more aggressive timeline for retrofitting the CPC-1232 cars, imposing a deadline of April 1, 2020 for non-jacketed cars.

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DataSpotlight

The recent oil production boom in the United States, while astounding, has created a misleading narrative that the United States is no longer dependent on oil imports. Reports of surging domestic production, calls for relaxation of the crude oil export ban, labels of “Saudi America,” and the recent collapse in oil prices have created a perception that the United States has more oil than it knows what to do with.

This view is misguided. While some forecasts project that the United States could become a self-sufficient oil producer within the next decade, this remains a distant prospect. According to the April 2015 Short Term Energy Outlook, total U.S. crude oil production averaged an estimated 9.3 million barrels per day in March, while total oil demand in the country is over 19 million barrels per day.

This graphic helps illustrate the regional variations in crude oil supply and demand. North America, Europe, and Asia all run significant production deficits, with the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and Former Soviet Union are global engines of crude oil supply.